Scripture and Family
[The Serekh Scroll]
[13 Steps before Nephi Killed Laban]
[Zoram Joins Lehi’s Family]
[Old Testament Mostly Unavailable in Ancient World]
[Lehi’s Vision of the Tree of Life]
156 There are just two short passages I want to read from that Serekh Scroll we discussed before. These are some that are particularly jarring to both Christians and Jews. They show why the scrolls have been neglected and how much they mean for us. This is the Serekh Scroll, the first one. It’s from the eighth plate. They are rolled up and have pages like a book, but they are put together side by side. You never read a scroll like this as they do in the movies and on the stage. You never do it that way; you have to roll it this way. It’s twenty-three feet long, so you have to keep rolling it and unrolling it.
156 This one [the Serekh Scroll] says, “And in the council of the church there shall be twelve men in charge. And there shall be three priests [at the head of everything] who shall be perfect in all things that have been revealed from the Torah [the law] and in doing righteously and in judgment, loving mercy and being humble in their ways—each man walking with his neighbor—to be firm in the faith while they are upon this earth, with a strong sense and resolve and with a contrite spirit.” That sounds familiar: a presidency of three, the council of twelve, and the qualifications. They have to be perfect in just about everything. Along with that, they have to be humble, not pull rank or anything like that, and walk with a contrite spirit. Then it quotes here where they come out. It says, “When those times will come in Israel to establish a new order of things, they shall go forth from the midst of the company of men of iniquity [CIWEL is iniquity, apostasy, going the wrong way; they shall go forth out of the midst of the wicked] to go out into the desert [the MIDBAR of the desert is not complete desert; it is always the area between the desert and the sown, where you go out; you can graze cattle there; you can’t farm there, but neither would you starve there if you are careful] and to prepare there a way for the Lord [and they write Jehovah in code here] even as it has been written by the Prophet Isaiah in 40:13, ‘In the wilderness make straight his paths. Prepare a highway in the wilderness for our God. That is according to the teaching of the scriptures. When they are there, they shall observe all the laws that have been given by Moses from the beginning and all the commandments which have been given from time to time, from dispensation to dispensation in the church as it has been revealed to the NEBFFM B*-RUAH QEDOSHD, by the Holy Ghost.”
157 It’s very interesting; they often refer to the Holy Ghost. I’ve had some Israeli students in the class, and they really sat up when they heard that, “Does it say that?” [they said]. Yes, it says “Holy Ghost” all right; that’s what we have here. Then this ordinance that is in the supplement to the Serekh Scroll (found at the same time). In this one about the order of the church, there is just one section we want to read, “And this shall be the order of all the community (YAH AD) of Israel in the last days when they shall organize themselves into a church in order to walk according to all the ordinances of the sons of Zadok [Melchizedek, the righteous].” Then there’s the description of the sacrament at the end here. “And when they are met for the table of the church [the SHULHAN HA-YAHAD, the sacrament or special meal] or to partake of the new wine [firosh], and the table is all properly set and everything in order, and the wine has been properly mixed for drinking, no one shall put forth his hand [it’s the syntax here] upon the bread or reach it out to drink the wine until the priest has first blessed it. He must bless it before all. He blesses the bread and then he blesses the new wine. Then he reaches forth his hand and puts it on the bread. He’s going to pass it, or he partakes of it first. Then it isn’t just describing part of the ritual, but it says hereafter: “Hereafter, the Messiah of Israel shall reach forth his hand upon the bread. After he has blessed all the community of the church, the sacrament shall be passed to each man according to his office in the church. And this is the order of the church for all the meetings of the quorums whenever ten men shall come together.”
157,158 Whenever as many as ten come they must have the sacrament is the point, and it must be done in this way. The bread and the wine should be blessed because after comes the Messiah. Well, of course, that’s why we have the sacrament. This has no resemblance at all to the eucharists of the Christian churches, etc., or anything the Jews do. St. Basil, one of the eight great doctors of the church, wrote (and Origen said the same), “We know that they baptized, but nothing in the scripture tells us how they baptized. We know they married, but we have no examples of what a marriage ceremony should be. We have none of these rituals handed down. We know they had the sacrament, but we don’t know how it was administered. There is nothing said about that. The last supper is one thing, but how do you do it in the church?” So here we have the way it should be done in the community. Of course, it’s the way we do it. Why? Because the Messiah will be with them. In Matthew 14 and Mark 26, after the Lord has had the sacrament he says, “I will not partake of this wine again with you until I partake of it anew in my Father’s kingdom” (then we’ll have it again). Every time he appears after his resurrection, he orders bread and wine to be brought and has the meal with them, as he does with the Nephites in 3 Nephi. He administers the sacrament to them; he blesses it personally. If the Messiah of Israel does that, why do we do it? One purpose: “That they do always remember Him.” Why? “That they may have His Spirit to be with them.” Right now. This represents the presence of the Messiah—the time when he shall come. When he was with us before he had this meal. When he shall be with us hereafter, he will have this meal. We are remembering both of them right now. We are looking forward to him. “That they always have His Spirit to be with them and they always remember him.” So this is what the sacrament is. You can imagine how this has upset both the Christians and the Jews. They say, “Well, we don’t have anything like this. What’s going on here?”
158 In chapter four they are going back to Jerusalem again. Notice, it talks about Laban and his city patrol of fifty and his tens of thousands in the field because he was high commander—exactly the same position that Jaush held in the Lachish Letters. You notice that Nephi is a very powerful speaker and a terrific persuader. What a salesman he would be! There are a number of speeches by him here, and he is great in the SUASORIA. He is very strong in the protreptic type of oratory, which is urging somebody to do something. He has a line of reason that builds up to a climax and then just forces you into it.
158 He said, Back to Jerusalem, phooey [paraphrased]. They’ve had a bad enough time. They were chased out the first time and didn’t get anywhere; now they have to go back. “Therefore let us go up; let us be strong like unto Moses; for he truly spake unto the waters of the Red Sea and they divided hither and thither” (1 Nephi 4:2). They would accept that tradition, you see. Then he argues in a line, “Ye know that this is true; and ye also know that an angel hath spoken unto you; wherefore can ye doubt?” Well, now wait a minute. They saw an angel and they can doubt? “Wherefore can ye doubt?” Why weren’t they completely overwhelmed by the angel? Why didn’t that convince them for the rest of their lives? This is an interesting phenomenon. Brigham Young said, “Pray that you will not see an angel, because everyone who has seen an angel has apostatized from the Church.” Nearly all of them did. “Wherefore can ye doubt?” When the angel is gone, you are still there. That’s the point. You are still yourself; you haven’t changed your character. You may see ten angels, but that doesn’t make any difference. There was the glory of Moses on the children of Israel, but as soon as he left them they immediately were up to their old shenanigans—the golden calf and all the rest of it. Do these things leave a permanent imprint? A person goes back to his normal life, and in this life the earth has a very strong hold on us. Nothing is more powerful than gravitation—the weakest form in the universe.
159 1 Nephi 4:3,5 Well, he goes on here. He says, You know the angel spoke to you. Why can you doubt that? [paraphrased]. “Let us go up; the Lord is able to deliver us, even as our fathers, and to destroy Laban, even as the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 4:3). Here is already a very interesting anticipation of Laban’s fate. He’s going to destroy Laban (the Lord will). It’s Nephi’s subconscious speaking here, I suppose, but you see what an argument he has. Then this fifth verse is interesting too. In an old Saints Herald where Emma Smith was being interviewed after the death of the Prophet, she said when they got to this passage (Joseph Smith was translating with the seer stones), he looked up with surprise and said, “Emma, did Jerusalem have walls?” He didn’t even know the city had walls. He didn’t know anything about what he was writing here. Yes, Jerusalem had walls.
159,160 1 Nephi 4:6,9 Nephi goes on. He was led by the spirit. This passage reassures anybody. “And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do” (1 Nephi 4:6). This is a very popular passage in the Book of Mormon because inside of all of us there comes that time when you are led by the Spirit not knowing what you should do. Yet you are willing to be led. What does your own judgment have to do with it? You don’t know the situation. They don’t know the situation in Jerusalem. What are they going to do? Well, he finds Laban drunk, etc. Then it takes thirteen steps for him to rationalize with himself. He doesn’t do it; it’s the Spirit. But he is so reluctant to kill Laban. I told you the story about the two Arabs, where little Fayek Salim said, “There’s something wrong with this story.” It’s always criticized: “This is such a bloody thing that should never have happened. This shouldn’t have been put in here,” [people say]. But this is the way Arabs do things. After the class Fayek and [another student] were really quite worried. They said, “Why did he wait so long to cut off his head? That was not according to Arab custom or behavior. It was his chance.” But he had waited a long time. He had a real struggle here, you’ll notice. “The hilt thereof was of pure gold,... and the blade thereof was of the most precious steel” (1 Nephi 4:9). Steel is always precious. They had plenty of steel in Lehi’s day, but it was very precious—Cordova steel and Damascus steel. A sword was worth thousands of dollars they were so valuable. It could cut through an anvil it was such marvelous stuff. Seven hundred years older than this is the purest steel blade of Tutankhamen with a pure gold handle. The blade is pure steel, and that’s what he said here—a very precious and very valuable weapon.
160 1 Nephi 4:11; Ether 8:19 Here’s Laban dead drunk in the street, a disgusting figure. But you are hardly going to attack a sleeping man. As we are told in the ballad of Clerk Sunders, “For shame to slay a sleeping man.” We don’t do that sort of thing. He didn’t want to do that either, but he was “constrained by the Spirit.” He had the impulse to kill Laban. “But I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man.” That’s the first thing. He wouldn’t do it because that’s the first rule: “For the Lord ... neither doth he will that man should shed blood, but in all things hath forbidden it, from the beginning of man,” as we read in Ether 8:19. So he shrunk and wouldn’t do it. That means he was sick at his stomach. He wasn’t going to do it at all. “And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold [notice the next reason] the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands” (this is your chance). Like other high military officials in our time, Nazi criminals, etc., Laban was a murderer. Nephi knew he was a murderer and a lawless man because he had robbed them. He was a thief. He made them a promise. When they went to deal, he chased them out, tried to kill them, and took all they left with him. That was the end of the deal. That’s the sort of a person he was dealing with, so he thought of that as a pretty good reason. Then there’s another reason: “Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord [another argument]; and he also had taken away our property” (1 Nephi 4:11).
160,161 1 Nephi 4:12-18 Well, it’s about time. No, he still won’t do it. Then verse 12: “And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again [after all this holding back]: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands [then another argument]; Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.” (You’ve got to get that record.) “And now, when I, Nephi, had heard these words, I remembered the words of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments [So it’s the commandments. This is a special order, you see. This isn’t just an impulse and a chance. He wouldn’t be justified in doing this on his own, but now he gets a special order], they shall prosper in the land of promise [another argument]. Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses, save they should have the law. And I also knew that the law was engraven upon the plates of brass [he wouldn’t get them otherwise]. And again, I knew that the Lord had delivered Laban into my hands for this cause [it had a definite purpose; this has taken thirteen steps to convince him that he had better go ahead with it]—that I might obtain the records according to his commandments. Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit.” Well, he was a skilled hunter, as you know, with a bow. When he was in the mountains there, he was pretty good. But after an agony of debate, he finally did it. Then he put on Laban’s garments and girded on his armor.
161 1 Nephi 4:22-18 Well, it’s about time. No, he still won’t do it. Then verse 12: “And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again [after all this holding back]: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands [then another argument]; Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.” (You’ve got to get that record.) “And now, when I, Nephi, had heard these words, I remembered the words of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments [So it’s the commandments. This is a special order, you see. This isn’t just an impulse and a chance. He wouldn’t be justified in doing this on his own, but now he gets a special order], they shall prosper in the land of promise [another argument]. Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses, save they should have the law. And I also knew that the law was engraven upon the plates of brass [he wouldn’t get them otherwise]. And again, I knew that the Lord had delivered Laban into my hands for this cause [it had a definite purpose; this has taken thirteen steps to convince him that he had better go ahead with it]—that I might obtain the records according to his commandments. Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit.” Well, he was a skilled hunter, as you know, with a bow. When he was in the mountains there, he was pretty good. But after an agony of debate, he finally did it. Then he put on Laban’s garments and girded on his armor.
1 Nephi 4:22-29 Then an interesting thing happened in the treasury. As they were carrying the engravings out, he met the servant of Laban. Here you get a typical glimpse into the Lachish Letters, don’t you? 1 Nephi 4:22, “And he spake unto me concerning the elders of the Jews, he knowing that his master, Laban, had been out by night among them.” Holding night sessions with the elders has a great sense of danger and tension here. He was wearing his ceremonial armor. It was a crisis. “And I spake unto him as if it had been Laban. And I also spake unto him that I should carry the engravings, which were upon the plates of brass, to my elder brethren, who were without the walls. ... And he, supposing that I spake of the brethren of the church ...” (When I said “the brethren,” he thought I meant “the elders” and that they were outside and wanted to get the plates out of the city.) This is an interesting situation, you see. As they went along, the servant babbled to him. “And he spake unto me many times concerning the elders of the Jews, as I went forth unto my brethren, who were without the walls.” The servant kept up a steady stream of talk and filled him in about the elders and what was going on in town, etc. He was a very conscientious secretary. When Nephi and Laban’s servant appeared in the dark, they [Laman and Lemuel] ran for their lives. They thought it was Laban. He called after them and said, “It’s only me.”
161,162 1 Nephi 4:20-33 Then Laban’s servant was terrified. Nephi grabbed him, held his mouth, and persuaded him to come with them. He was large and powerful. Here we get a bit of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were happening at that time. We have scrolls from this earlier time along the Dead Sea now in the Cave of Letters, etc. Verse 33: “And I spake unto him, even with an oath that he need not fear.” Remember, Zoram was the servant of a man who was not very easy to get along with; you can be sure of that. You know what type of a man Laban was by now. There are the best little character sketches in the Book of Mormon. Zoram, I am sure, was very glad to do this. His name is very interesting (it’s a Canaanite name) being a servant and probably not an Israelite. Throughout the Book of Mormon, the Zoramites always retain a special ethnic identity. They are always Zoramites and always by themselves. Zoram is of another blood (Ishmael is probably related; he comes later) and he would be a free man. That’s why he would go into the desert. “He should be a free man like unto us if he would go down in the wilderness with us.” That’s the only way you can do it. They’ve gone forth into the wilderness, as we just read. When the time conies, the Sons of the Covenant shall leave the world of the wicked and go out into the desert to prepare His way. This is the idea, you see.
162,163 1 Nephi 4:34 “Surely the Lord hath commanded us to do this thing; and shall we not be diligent in keeping the commandments of the Lord?” If you are going to keep the commandments of the Lord and be diligent, you have to do what they were doing. You have to come out of the midst of the wicked. Remember the passages we read last time: “They have come to plan a temple, a true temple, for Aaron and for Israel until the Messiah of Israel shall come.” They are preparing His way in the wilderness. “Shall we not be diligent in keeping the commandments of the Lord? Therefore, if thou wilt go down into the wilderness to my father thou shalt have place with us.” That means being accepted as a member of the society. When you are fleeing from the enemy (and this comes later in the dreams of Nephi) and you go to a great sheikh’s tent, you go in and kneel and put the KAF (hem) of his garment on your shoulder (a figure we find very clear in the Book of Mormon), and you say, “ANA DAKHILUKA, I am your suppliant.” He is obliged then to say, “Have a place; have a family; have a share in our tent.” You are taken in. AHL is a FAMILY and OHEL is a tent. MARHABA is a WIDE PLACE. People move over so you have a place to sit down, and then you are a member. Nephi says the same thing in verse 34: “Therefore, if thou wilt go down into the wilderness to my father thou shalt have place [MURHAB] with us.”
163 1 Nephi 4:35,36 “Zoram did take courage at the words which I spake [they sounded good to him]. Now Zoram was the name of the servant; and he promised that he would go down into the wilderness unto our father. Yea, and he also made an oath unto us [he enters the covenant] that he would tarry with us from that time forth.” After that they didn’t worry about him; they knew he wouldn’t break his oath. “When Zoram had made an oath unto us, our fears did cease concerning him.” He joined the community. The community was raided, and they were outlaws. The king and especially Laban had been out to get them. They chased them out, it says here. Verse 36: “Now we were desirous that he should tarry with us for this cause, that the Jews might not know concerning our flight into the wilderness [the police were after them], lest they should pursue us and destroy us.” So Zoram couldn’t go back and report. That would never do.
163 After Solomon there were the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. This was the kingdom of Judah. That’s called the Judean Desert. [Jerusalem] is the Judean city, and David is king of Judah. It’s a national designation. It has nothing to do with religion actually. Judah was the fourth son of Jacob. They were divided into tribes, and his tribe settled there and had the city. The other tribes were around there. Lehi didn’t belong to that tribe. He belonged to the tribe of Manasseh. He was descended from Joseph, as we find out later.
163,164 1 Nephi 5: 2-8 Here’s another interesting touch in the next chapter. Remember, none of the people wanted to go. Nobody was on fire about this journey. Laman and Lemuel, of course, were flat against it. Nephi had to have a special revelation (Lehi had had plenty of them), and he had to persuade Sam to go. Now we see that Mama [Sariah] was against it from the beginning too. She didn’t like it at all. She was filled with joy when they returned because [1 Nephi 5:2] “she had supposed that we had perished in the wilderness; and she also had complained against my father.” Sariah is the worried Jewish mama here. She really tore into him. She complained, just like the boys did, that he was “a visionary man,” APIQQEAH. (How can you trust in your crazy visions? Now what?) Verse 2: “Behold thou hast led us forth from the land of our inheritance, and my sons are no more, and we perish in the wilderness.” You can hear her going on and on. She gave him a bad time until they finally came back again. Then there was great relief because they had come back. Then there was joy. “And after this manner of language had my mother complained against my father.” She really worked on him. Nobody liked this trip. And his patient rejoinder is so typical: “I know that I am a visionary man” he says. “But behold [the tense is important here], I have obtained a land of promise.” He already had it, you see. The promise is a promise. All things are present once you have made the transition—once you have accepted it. “I know that the Lord will deliver my sons out of the hands of Laban, and bring them down again unto us in the wilderness [don’t worry, it’s all right]. And after this manner of language did my father, Lehi, comfort my mother, Sariah” until they came back, and then, verse 7: “Behold their joy was full, and my mother was comforted. And she spake, saying: Now I know of a surety [she had doubted all along] that the Lord hath commanded my husband to flee into the wilderness [until then she had been scolding him all along];... and after this manner of language did she speak.” He brings us into the family with these things going on.
164 1 Nephi 5:9-16 Then they rejoiced and offered their mizbeah. And notice what was in the plates. It was the Tanach he brought back. It wasn’t just the plates of Moses. T is for Torah: that’s the five books of Moses. N is for Nebffm, the prophets. And K is for the Ketubim, which are the literary works (like the Psalms) and the histories. They call the entire Old Testament the Tanach, and that’s exactly what was in the bronze plates, as we read here. Notice verse 11: “And he beheld that they did contain the five books of Moses.” Verse 12: “And also a record of the Jews from the beginning [their complete history is there too], even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah.” The inhabitants of Judah were Jews. Verse 13: “And also the prophecies of the holy prophets.” So it contained the prophecies of the holy prophets, a record of the Jews from the beginning right down to Zedekiah at the time they left, and the five books of Moses. It was the Tanakh. So the Nephites had the complete Bible. And also they had their genealogy, and Lehi found out that he was a descendant of Joseph. Why didn’t he, who was an important rich man, have it? Well, these documents were very rare, and they were secret. He wouldn’t have been able to get them. Laban was also a descendant of Joseph in a direct line. That’s probably why they were in his house. But only one person at a time could receive these genealogical records; that was the direct descendant. In this case it happened to be Laban. Verse 17: “And now when my father saw all these things, he was filled with the Spirit, and began to prophesy concerning his seed—That these plates of brass should go forth unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people who were of his seed.”
164,165 This is an amazing thing. At that time the Old Testament was not in the possession of Jews. You couldn’t have it because it was a secret book. The circulation was very limited. The law was read publicly once a year, but only by the SOFERFM, the scribes and Pharisees. That’s why they were so jealous of their rights. The SOFTNM were the ones who started interpreting the law in Babylon where they didn’t have a temple. They got a proprietary claim. They called themselves the rabbis, which means “the great ones.” It’s their own title. The Talmud is full of the most outrageous boasting. You’ve never heard men who built themselves up as they did. They were absolutely insufferable, just like the scribes and Pharisees (a SOFINM is a “scribe”) of the New Testament that the Lord had to face up to. But you didn’t have a copy of the Bible in those days, and what’s more, nobody but Judah could have it at all. It wasn’t until the third century that Ptolemy had the seventy Jews come down. He was the king of Egypt and direct successor of Alexander the Great. He was a great and competent ruler, and he was collecting the greatest library in the world. We talked about Cyrus of Lydia and all the tyrants. They tried to build up their prestige by collecting big libraries. The bigger the library the better; it was better culture. As a rival to libraries in the North, Ptolemy wanted to have the largest library in the world. He thought he had every book on religion, but he was told, “There’s one book you don’t have, and that’s the book of the Jews. So he ordered the seventy Jews to be brought back to Alexandria. He shut each one up in a special cubbyhole by himself and gave him a copy of the Old Testament to translate. Then he compared the translations. Of course, the story is that they were all word-for-word and letter-for-letter. We still have the Septuagint. That’s why it’s called the Septuagint: it was a translation by seventy Jews. By comparing them he knew that they were right. What’s more, the Septuagint is far older than any Hebrew text we have. The oldest Hebrew text we have is the Ben Asher Codex from the ninth century A.D. We have the Greek text of the Old Testament from the third century B.C. We have that and we compare it.
165,166 1 Nephi 5:18-21 It’s a very interesting thing. Remember, in Cave One was a complete copy of Isaiah, a thousand years older than any other Hebrew copy of Isaiah known. I could have brought it because I have a bound copy. There are three thousand different readings of it, but they are mostly trivial readings, showing how marvelously well these scriptures have been handed down. But where there are differences, the Dead Sea Scrolls (the old, old ones) usually follow the Septuagint. And there are long passages from Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. Where they differ from our King James Bible, they follow the Septuagint, too. They follow the older text, so we have it here. But remember, nobody outside of Israel ever thought about the Old Testament. Ptolemy didn’t even know about it, though he was a very learned man. He didn’t know about it until a Jew in his court told him about it. So he got these seventy men and had it translated. But until then it was known only in Judah and only to a very select group of scribes who jealously guarded it. So when it [the Book of Mormon] says a thing like this: “That these plates of brass should go forth unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people” (1 Nephi 5:18), it is very shocking news. The copies were made in Alexandria. That’s where we get our Septuagint. It spread throughout the whole world from there, and all the world has the Bible now. Nobody ever dreamed that this local, national record would become the world record. Verse 19: “Wherefore, he said that these plates of brass should never perish; neither should they be dimmed any more by time. And he prophesied many things concerning his seed.” Notice, this doesn’t refer to the Book of Mormon; this refers to the brass plates. They are still bright. They have come down to us, and we still have them to this day. He said the records were “of great worth unto us.” Why did they need them on the trip? Verse 21: “... that we could preserve the commandments of the Lord unto our children” (the commandments in the prophets, in the writings, and in the book of Moses).
166 1 Nephi 6:5 Then he tells us he is going to give us an abbreviated account. “Wherefore, the things which are pleasing unto the world I do not write, but the things which are pleasing unto God and unto those who are not of the world” (1 Nephi 6:5). That’s important. The Book of Mormon is not to be peddled for entertainment or TV fare. It’s not meant to be diverting. Mark Twain said, “It’s simply chloroform in print.” Most people can’t even get through it; they think it’s the dullest book in the world. We know it’s anything but that, but it isn’t written as a best seller. It isn’t written for the sake of the story or the thrills, though people are trying to build it up for that to make a quic